A few weeks ago, Violet Evergarden‘s series director Taichi Ishidate attended Anime Expo alongside a few key creators from the project, to witness the series worldwide premiere 6 months before its actual start. The official site made an interview with him available today, where he explains his personal experiences during this trip, how it feels for a Japanese creator to see overseas fans react to their work first-hand, as well as some insight on the staff’s approach to this production….

My Hero Academia’s animation producer Yoshihiro Oyabu mentioned on twitter that episode 30 was the result an all-out lineup of creators, commanded by Yoshihiko Umakoshi…who’s celebrating his birthday! Let’s see if the episode delivered on all that promise.

We return to the abyss to explain its mysterious appeal, and how the creators of the show are effectively drawing us deeper and deeper into this mysterious world. Let’s learn more about the setting of Made in Abyss and Kinema Citrus’ crew.

Since Your Name has finally seen its bluray release in Japan, we’re going to give a thorough look at the neat details hidden in the film, the artists who made it all possible and their personal approach, as well as the usual notes about who animated what. There’s an essay on the film coming up as well, but for now this already should be a huge treat for fans of the film!

While I’m mentally preparing myself for the upcoming climax of this arc, here’s a look at the two episodes preceding it. I decided to switch the coverage to our Production Notes format for now. Hopefully it’s a change for the better! It shouldn’t come as a surprise that there was plenty of material to cover, so let’s dig in!

With a bit of delay, here’s our seasonal feature looking into the numbers of TV anime: how many key animators and animation directors the new Spring 2017 TV series required, as well as the degree of outsourcing involved. Complete with commentary to contextualize the data as usual, which this time focuses some nasty recent industry trends.

Welcome back to The Pre-Production of Anime, Megax‘s series following the path of an anime production from the inception of the project until it’s ready to be animated. Last time we talked about how a production organizes its writing work, so today it’s finally time to examine the design process and the main roles it entails. Let’s get to it! Part 3: Design Work

Before enjoying another look at the craft of this series and the fascinating vision of its key creators, there’s something more serious we must talk about. Even if this project by itself wasn’t necessarily at fault, someone died of overwork while producing this episode. That’s not something we should skip over. Let this be a final farewell to Kazunori Mizuno.

We’re still pacing our way through the show’s introduction, judging by how most of this episode was setup for things to come. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing to talk about, however! The state of the production itself is becoming increasingly clear, not to mention the appearance of a surprise star!